The mission of this page is to provide you with articles, links and resources to assist in the understanding of mental health and substance abuse stigma and how the media contributes to or helps eradicate inappropriate, outdated and unrealistic views of mental illness and chemical dependency. For more information about mental illness stigma, please visit our mental illness stigma Web page.

NAMI Media Awards for 2004.

NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness (they changed their name in 2005). Check the following links for more information about their 2004 media awards.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has announced its 2003 Media Awards. The NAMI 2003 Media Awards go to a very diverse group of movies, reporters and stories -- from the movie The Hours to coverage of children's issues to reports about National Football League players.

NAMI Media Coverage for 2002.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Web site spotlights the following 2002 Media Awards:

"NAMI" is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. StigmaBusters are dedicated to helping us all realize that mental illness is not something to be demeaned, misrepresented or exploited. Stigma Alerts also include praise for accurate and respectful representations of mental illness and the mentally ill. If you would like to receive advance, e-mailed Alerts from StigmaBusters before they are posted on the NAMI Web site, please go to Stigma Alerts and sign up. It is worth it!

Psychoanalysts and Mob Experts Analyze The Sopranos.

They did it again . . . the analysts of The Sopranos that is, for their second season analyzing, commenting, and reacting to the fourth season of The Sopranos (2002). Who are they?

Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and author of The Psychology of The Sopranos and Psychiatry and the Cinema. Philip A. Ringstrom, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a senior faculty member at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Joel Whitebook, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Margaret Crastnopol, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Northwest Center for Psychoanalysis. All are practicing therapists as well

Find links to all of the 2002 Soprano's discussions at Slate's TV Club page. This is a Search Page using the term "TV Club" and lists all the TV Club discussions. If this page is unavailalble, use the Search Box on the main page of Slate and type in the words "TV Club Sopranos" then click on the Published sorting button to sort the results by date.

Please note that for the 2004 Season, the analysts were discarded in favor of "Mob Experts." No more official psychoanalyzing the show... that's gotta hurt.

Starting in Spring 2001, Slate, MSN's sophisticated Webzine, asked Dr. Melfi's real-life counterparts to examine and discuss developments on The Sopranos. Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., a professor of psychoanalysis (then at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kanasas), co-author of Psychiatry and the Cinema; Philip A. Ringstrom, Ph.D., Psy.D., an analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and a full-time practitioner; Joel Whitebook, a practicing analyst in New York, on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; and, Margaret Crastnopol, Ph.D., on the faculty of the Northwest Center for Psychoanalysis and a practicing psychologist/psychoanalyst in Seattle, all wrote extensively about The Sopranos.

Glenn Gabbard, M.D., the author of Psychiatry and the Cinema, was one of Slate's contributors to the analysis of the portrayal of Dr. Melfi. Although Dr. Gabbard is not directly available on a Web site at which you can read his insights about media portrayals of psychiatrists, you can find his books at Amazon.com -- Psychiatry and the Cinema and The Psychology of the Sopranos.

The Media Has an Influence.

Big movies leave big impressions. No matter how much Hollywood, New York, Vancouver, B.C., or any other major center for film making may attempt to deny it, films have a great impact on us and on our perceptions.

On this page, you will find links to Web sites belonging to individuals and organizations that watch and comment on how the media is treating mental health care and how they are depicting clients and providers of care.

Entertainment Industries Council, Inc. (EIC) Web Site. The Entertainment Industries Council, Inc. (EIC) is a non-profit organization founded in 1983 by leaders in the entertainment industry to provide information, awareness and understanding of major health and social issues among the entertainment industries and to audiences at large.

Links to Movie Reviews.

Check the following links for movie reviews frequently posted by a psychiatrist at E-Clinical Psychiatry News -- Reel Life. The reviews used to be written by Dr. Alan A. Stone, the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry, at Harvard University.

The Reel Life column is now written by Roland Atkinson, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland Oregon. Many of his reviews can be viewed at his PsychFlix.com Web site.
To read current issues and back issues of Reel Life, you will need to create a logon identity at E-Clinical Psychiatry News. For your convenience, I have posted three of Dr. Stone's movie reviews as small Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) documents: